Associationism is the idea that
mental process
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, though ...
es operate by the
association
Association may refer to:
*Club (organization), an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal
*Trade association, an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry
* Voluntary associati ...
of one mental state with its successor states. It holds that all mental processes are made up of discrete psychological elements and their combinations, which are believed to be made up of sensations or simple feelings.
In philosophy, this idea is viewed as the outcome of
empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological theory that holds that knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience. It is one of several views within epistemology, along with rationalism and skepticism. Empir ...
and
sensationism. The concept encompasses a psychological theory as well as comprehensive philosophical foundation and scientific methodology.
History
Early history
The idea is first recorded in
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
and
Aristotle
Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
, especially with regard to the succession of memories. Particularly, the model is traced back to the Aristotelian notion that human memory encompasses all mental phenomena. The model was discussed in detail in the philosopher's work, ''Memory and Reminiscence''.
This view was widely embraced until the emergence of British associationism, which began with
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book '' Leviathan'', in which he expounds an infl ...
.
Associationist School
Members of the Associationist School, including
John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism". Considered one of ...
,
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" '' Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment phil ...
,
David Hartley,
Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted ...
,
James Mill
James Mill (born James Milne; 6 April 1773 – 23 June 1836) was a Scottish historian, economist, political theorist, and philosopher. He is counted among the founders of the Ricardian school of economics. He also wrote '' The History of Britis ...
,
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
,
Alexander Bain, and
Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov ( rus, Ива́н Петро́вич Па́влов, , p=ɪˈvan pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈpavləf, a=Ru-Ivan_Petrovich_Pavlov.ogg; 27 February 1936), was a Russian and Soviet experimental neurologist, psychologist and physio ...
, asserted that the principle applied to all or most mental processes.
[Boring, E. G. (1950) "A History of Experimental Psychology" New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts]
John Locke
The phrase association of ideas was first used by John Locke in 1689 in Chapter 33 of ''
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' is a work by John Locke concerning the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. It first appeared in 1689 (although dated 1690) with the printed title ''An Essay Concerning Humane Understan ...
'' entitled “Of the Association of Ideas″, he describes the ways that ideas can be connected to each other.
He writes “Some of our ideas have a natural correspondence and connexion with one another”.
Although he believed that some associations were natural and justified, he believed that others were illogical, causing errors in judgment. He also explains that one can associate some ideas together based on their education and culture, saying, “there is another connection of ideas wholly owing to chance or custom”.
The term associationism later became more prominent in psychology and the psychologists that subscribed to the idea became known as the associationists.
Locke's view that the mind and body are two aspects of the same unified phenomenon can be traced back to Aristotle's ideas on the subject.
David Hume
In his 1740 book ''
Treatise on Human Nature'' David Hume outlines three principles for ideas to be connected to each other: resemblance, continuity in time or place, and cause or effect.
He argues that the mind uses these principles, rather than reason, to traverse from idea to idea.
He writes “When the mind, therefore, passes from the idea or impression of one object to the idea or belief of another, it is not determined by reason, but by certain principles, which associate together the ideas of these objects, and unite them in the imagination.”
These connections are formed in the mind by observation and experience. Hume does not believe that any of these associations are “necessary’ in a sense that ideas or object are truly connected, instead he sees them as mental tools used for creating a useful mental representation of the world.
Later members
Later members of the school developed very specific principles elaborating how associations worked and even a physiological mechanism bearing no resemblance to modern
neurophysiology
Neurophysiology is a branch of physiology and neuroscience that studies nervous system function rather than nervous system architecture. This area aids in the diagnosis and monitoring of neurological diseases. Historically, it has been dominated b ...
.
[Pavlov, I.P. (1927, 1960) "Conditioned Reflexes" New York, Oxford (1927) Dover (1960)] For a fuller explanation of the intellectual history of associationism and the "Associationist School", see ''
Association of Ideas
Association of ideas, or mental association, is a process by which representations arise in consciousness, and also for a principle put forward by an important historical school of thinkers to account generally for the succession of mental phenome ...
''.
Applications
Associationism is often concerned with middle-level to higher-level mental processes such as
learning
Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals, and some machines; there is also evidence for some kind of le ...
.
For instance, the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis are linked in one's mind through repetition so that they become inextricably associated with one another.
Among the earliest experiments that tested the applications of associationism, involve Hermann Ebbinghaus' work. He was considered the first experimenter to apply the associationist principles systematically, and used himself as subject to study and quantify the relationship between rehearsal and recollection of material.
Some of the ideas of the Associationist School also anticipated the principles of
conditioning Conditioning may refer to:
Science, computing, and technology
* Air conditioning, the removal of heat from indoor air for thermal comfort
** Automobile air conditioning, air conditioning in a vehicle
** Ice storage air conditioning, air conditi ...
and its use in
behavioral psychology.
Both
classical conditioning
Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) is a behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a triangle). It also refers to the lear ...
and
operant conditioning
Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process where behaviors are modified through the association of stimuli with reinforcement or punishment. In it, operants—behaviors that affect one's environment—are c ...
use positive and negative
associations as means of conditioning.
Karatani's theory
Kojin Karatani, a Japanese philosopher, refers to
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt (, , ; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a political philosopher, author, and Holocaust survivor. She is widely considered to be one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.
Arendt was born ...
's remark about
council communism (
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
or
Räte) that it does not emerge as a result of tradition or theory of
revolution
In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...
s, but "entirely spontaneously, each time as if it had never existed before", and that such a social construct is the same as what has been called socialism, communism, anarchism, etc., but because these names are cloying and misleading, he calls it X or associationism in his book.
See also
*
Calculus of relations
In mathematical logic, algebraic logic is the reasoning obtained by manipulating equations with free variables.
What is now usually called classical algebraic logic focuses on the identification and algebraic description of models appropriate fo ...
*
Connectionism
Connectionism refers to both an approach in the field of cognitive science that hopes to explain mental phenomena using artificial neural networks (ANN) and to a wide range of techniques and algorithms using ANNs in the context of artificial int ...
*
Family resemblance
Family resemblance (german: Familienähnlichkeit, link=no) is a philosophical idea made popular by Ludwig Wittgenstein, with the best known exposition given in his posthumously published book ''Philosophical Investigations'' (1953). It argues tha ...
*
Prototype theory
Pocket Knife Brain versus Meatloaf brain Argument
Lisa Feldman Barrett, a distinguished professor at Northeastern University and the author of the novel “Seven and A Half Lessons about the Brain” who specializes in affective sciences. She uses a metaphor commonly known as the Pocket Knife Brain and the Meatloaf brain to develop a deeper argument to faculty psychology and associationism. She interchangeably uses the pocket knife with faculty psychology to connect the two ideas together. She argues that every tool of the pocket knife has a specific purpose and cannot be used to facilitate the use of another tool. For instance, the knife and the mini scissors. Despite both of them being similar, both of these tools are ultimately used for completely different purposes as a knife cannot cut a paper in half like a scissor can. However, this is where the idea of associationism comes into play with the meatloaf brain, where all parts act in unison of each other. This argument presents the theory that the mental processes are associated by whatever the person has previously associated it with.
For example, if someone were to say “summer”, one may associate it with hot, sunny, pool, relaxing, beach, drinks. It can only be done when there is a previous association with the word summer. Therefore, the meatloaf brain explains that since its structure is uniform then the use of different components is necessary just like if a person were to make a meatloaf, there isn’t just one type of meat in it. In addition, as Lisa argues in the book, a person who is originally coming from a Western background, the mind will have two features, thoughts and emotions. Having said that, according to her, these are two fundamentally different things. However, a person who is under the influence of Balinese culture, he might argue with the Western person that he does not think emotions and thoughts are different. From this person’s point of view, these two things are a single thing. This is an example in which explicitly demonstrates different basic features where ideologies clash. The way each person associates the features of the mind comes about in the upbringing of the person. The person from the West has formed an understanding that the mind has two distinct features whereas, the person from the Balinese culture understands it differently. A reason for this is due to associationism, the ability to associate one idea to a specific moment.
References
Further reading
*
Pre-History of Cognitive Science
* {{cite book, author=Howard C. Warren, year=1921, title=A History Of The Association Psychology, publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons, url=https://archive.org/details/historyoftheasso007979mbp, accessdate=2010-02-10
Theory of mind
Psychological theories
History of psychology
Socialism
ca:Ateneu Suecà del Socors